Are you looking to improve your German grammar? DerDieDas Professor helps you memorise the genders with through multi-sensory encoding: stories, colours, illustrations and sounds all stimulate your brain to remember the right article. Recommended, if you are: - before an exam (A1-B2 level) - attending a German school and need better notes - self-frustrated by imperfect grammar Launched with the most used 800 nouns. Bist du bereit?
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German is often logical: there are rules about how to apply the gender articles.
And then... there are exceptions, where you lose track.
The usual logical learning only helps up to a point - a significant share of words should just be memorised. Starting as soon as A1 level - das Mädchen, die Maus, der Regen.
First I realised my son lost a few points in a school exam because he missed the right gender of 2 words. One note down.
Then I realised I am frustrated by frequently failing at the same words. As a non-native speaker, could not practice them enough.
Oh, I have some background in behavioral science as well as AI.
Then I thought: if I can not generate enough repetition of words to memorise... why not make the whole experience more intense? Your brain needs less repetition if we open up the stimulus.
So-called "multi-sensory encoding": when you practice, it is not only the words but their environment that shouts the gender - coloring, story type, figures, gender of voices...
A few people tried the concept and worked. For me also, significantly improving my hit rate of the right genders.
Try it, its fun, any feedback and improvement ideas welcome!
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Der/die/das is genuinely one of the hardest walls in German for non-native speakers - the problem is real and the personal backstory makes sense as a motivation.
My skepticism is on differentiation. Color-coding by gender (blue=der, red=die, green=das) has been the standard approach in German textbooks for decades, and apps like Duolingo, Anki decks, and Babbel all cover this space with large existing userbases.
The multi-sensory angle (stories + color + sound simultaneously) is interesting in theory - the behavioral science logic that fewer reps are needed when stimulus is more intense. But I'd want to see retention data, not just the theory. Has there been any structured testing on whether users actually retain the articles longer vs. other methods, or is that still ahead?
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Maker
@galdayan Thanks for the insightful viewpoint and you are exactly right about my current dilemma! I only have "anecdotal evidence" yet about the approach being efficient, but could not yet enough users onboard to carry out a structured and proving texting. The system is already built to allow measurements (ie, repeating tests / checking hit rates progress over a period of time), but need (many) more users to make sense out of that. That's one reason I launched the product here also :)
Der/die/das is genuinely one of the hardest walls in German for non-native speakers - the problem is real and the personal backstory makes sense as a motivation.
My skepticism is on differentiation. Color-coding by gender (blue=der, red=die, green=das) has been the standard approach in German textbooks for decades, and apps like Duolingo, Anki decks, and Babbel all cover this space with large existing userbases.
The multi-sensory angle (stories + color + sound simultaneously) is interesting in theory - the behavioral science logic that fewer reps are needed when stimulus is more intense. But I'd want to see retention data, not just the theory. Has there been any structured testing on whether users actually retain the articles longer vs. other methods, or is that still ahead?
@galdayan Thanks for the insightful viewpoint and you are exactly right about my current dilemma! I only have "anecdotal evidence" yet about the approach being efficient, but could not yet enough users onboard to carry out a structured and proving texting. The system is already built to allow measurements (ie, repeating tests / checking hit rates progress over a period of time), but need (many) more users to make sense out of that. That's one reason I launched the product here also :)